Pride is my favorite time of year, but these summer days are feeling like winter.
When I moved to New York in June of 2017, I will never forget the liberation that I felt during Pride for the first time. Suddenly, I was in a space that not only loved me for who I was but celebrated the fact that I was different. I would walk down to the West Village and cry at the sheer number of rainbow flags, the signs, proclamations from every street and business that said, "You belong here. We accept you."
But this Pride is different, and I don't need to tell you that. If you're reading this, you know what we're living through.
I've thought a lot about what to write this week to launch Pride Month. I've even written three different versions of this article, all trying to unravel the same question.
What does Pride mean in 2025?
I don't know. But I know what it feels like.
It feels like winter.
See, I have this philosophy about winter.
In winter, we are more alert to all the things that surround us.
You can't just walk to your car in the morning. You have to bundle up to brave the cold. Then, you have to scrape your windshield or sit in the car shivering until your engine heats up. In summer, it's just a walk. In winter, it's an adventure.
And adventures bring discomfort. And discomfort brings growth.
As humans, we only grow through trial and failure. It's how we're wired. And what is the best way to get the strength needed to keep persevering? Other people.
Winter brings us together because we realize in the depths of winter, during the long nights of darkness, that we need other humans to make it through. Feelings of isolation and loneliness increase during the winter, showing us that we need people. The shared challenges that we face in winter make us more likely to come together and help each other. In our collective hardship, we find community.
That's how I feel about this year's Pride.
It's a pride to be alert, to grow, and to remember the power of community.
No longer do I take for granted the rainbow flags that businesses fly when I see them. Now, there's risk involved for corporations to fly that flag. And though I will see fewer of them, the ones that I do see will have so much more meaning behind them.
No longer am I allowing myself to take things at face value. I am learning; I am deepening my relationship to Queerness. I am growing.
No longer am I simply happy to see other Queer people on the street; now, I smile at them and wish them happy Pride to let them know they are seen, they are safe, and they are welcomed.
Everything I love about Pride is still here, but the feelings have more depth, and the colors are more vibrant. No longer are we just celebrating the fact that we are who we are, but now we are celebrating in defiance.
And what a beautiful defiance we have. We are a community that gets to show that defiance through love and through joy. We are a community that gets to keep the fires burning all through the winter so that when spring comes, we are stronger because of it.
And like many who have said a prayer for spring, here is my prayer for Pride. For this Pride, next year's Pride, and Pride 50 years from now.
A Prayer for Pride
I hope that your Pride is beautiful.
I hope that the marches and parades to come are all safe and protected. I hope that they're full of revelers celebrating a nonnegotiable truth that cannot be stripped away.
I hope that kids in rural communities see visible Queerness in unexpected places and know that they're not alone and that nothing is wrong with them.
I hope that our joy is so wide and infectious that it sends a message. That we are not going anywhere. That we have been here for millennia past, and we will be here for millennia more.
I hope that our trans siblings feel the love, solidarity, and respect that the rest of the country refuses to show them.
I hope the quiet queers who live in the beautiful rural spaces celebrate their Pride exactly how they want to, in solitude and peace, with no one disrupting their sacred routine.
I hope that the drag queens and drag kings get the loudest cheers and the most gracious crowds and tips they've always dreamt about.
I hope that every Queer person smiles at each other on the street.
I hope that the circuit gays go out and dance the night away, reveling like our forebears til the sunrise. But then, I hope they continue the necessary work to ensure liberation for all.
I hope that those folk still in the closet give themselves some grace as they continue on this wild journey of self-love.
I hope that we are all a little kinder to each other.
I hope we remember that while we may not all fight the same way, we're all fighting the same fight. The enemy is not within. They will come for all of us, and their work will be infinitely easier if we are divided.
I hope that we hold on to hope. Because hope is like a rainbow. It is something they can never touch.
Without our hope, we become as sad and lonely as they are, looking to instill pain out of fear. But we have always been stronger than fear. We have always found ways to dance and cry and laugh and love, and our sheer existence is so much richer because it lives in opposition to 'normalcy.'
We get to write our own stories with a liberation that few others know. We get to pen our own tales, and while some of the ink may be in blood, so much of it is in glitter.
We get to tap into a lineage that carries so much sweat, from sex and dancing and marching and laughing and summers on the beach and winters keeping cozy.
We are an indivisible people. We are a tangible people. We are a people who, like the rainbow, are so much stronger for the diversity of color we contain. But we cannot exist as individual rays of light alone. We must harness our own unique shades of life and then bring them towards each other so that we, combined, make a rainbow that is impossible to ignore. Impossible to diminish.
And with the light of that rainbow, we will be able to always find our way out of winter and plant beautiful seeds in the sunlight of spring.
Thanks for this post -- I'm still learning about the LGBTQA+ community as an ally. It's great to get more insight. Hang in there, spring always comes after winter...